Dans Papers - May 11, 2007

I know very little about the birds and the bees. True, I can tell the difference between a blue jay and a parrot. And I've experienced what a gang of robins can do to my just-hung wash. No, it's the bee part I need to know more about.

Now look what's happened. Just when I'm finally ready to get the facts about the secret life of bees, the little buzzers go off and pull a fast one. They're disappearing.

That's right. Honeybees are dying off. It's happening all across this sweet land of ours. And that includes my North Fork. Right here in Cutchogue there's a farmer, Tom Wickham is his name, who says things are so bad he has to rent hives so there are enough bees to pollinate his crops.

I can't imagine life without North Fork rhubarb. That's just for starters. Then there's strawberries and blueberries and apples. Apparently you need bees if you want the fruit. That's something my mother never told me when she sat me down, a few weeks after I turned 20, to tell me about the birds and bees. But then, I don't think they grew rhubarb in Queens. We did have a Victory Garden during World War II, but that's another story.

Back to the hives. Scientists are working to find out why bees are dying off. (Those guys are always working on something after it happens). They've given the situation a name, though. It's "Colony Collapse Disorder." That sounds serious. And it is, too. Joe Gergela, executive director of the Long Island Farm Bureau, says, "About one-third of Long Island's traditional crops such as apples depend on honeybees."

I don't know Joe, but I know Cindy, his sister. Cindy's completely reliable. So I bet Joe is, too.

Just what can we do? We've faced insect crises before. Think mosquitoes and ticks and how we all concerned ourselves with them a few years back. Now we have to think bees.

What we're interested in is keeping bees alive and happy. Possibly giving them a couple of days off each week. Like unions do for their colonies. After all, we're dealing here with big bucks. A Cornell University study claims the value of honeybee pollination to United States agriculture is in the neighborhood of $14.6 billion. That's some neighborhood!

What bees do, exactly, is travel from pretty blossom to pretty blossom. All the while transferring pollen from plant to plant, thus fertilizing the plant. Clever, huh? Wonder who thought that up?

Well, here's what I thought up. Three things, actually. We could do one or all three. If you have some ideas, send 'em to Dan's Papers.

Idea One: Dry Up. I learned most bees love the sun and prefer nesting in dry places. Now there's no question that the North Fork is one of New York's sunniest locations. That's not a problem. But the dry part presents a challenge. Perhaps we could run big fans in orchards, drying up some of our humidity. Or could we, at ebb tide, quickly build great big retaining walls along the Long Island Sound and Peconic Bay shoreline, thereby reducing the area of water surrounding our fork? Maybe.

Idea Two: Leaf Well Enough Alone. There is a certain bee, the Digger Bee, that likes to nest under leaf piles. I think there's potential here. If North Fork homeowners just let their leaves accumulate, why in a few years we'd have more bees than leaves. It would be great for our wallets, too. We wouldn't have to buy leaf bags. And the best news? The towns wouldn't have to schedule leaf pickups. That should save thousands of dollars.

There are some drawbacks, of course. I'm thinking chiropractors. Many of their patients each autumn season come because of back problems caused by zealous raking. If we don't rake leaves, the chiropractors might lose patients. Not good. But we could license chiropractors to handle bee stings.

Idea Three: Bee Holiday. Two days each week set dozens of grade-school kids loose in North Fork orchards. Tell them to climb, to run, to touch everything - just what we've always told them not to do. Covered with pollen, the bee-kids will pollinate like crazy and have fun doing it.

So don't worry about anything. It's never too late to learn about the birds and the bees and, just like those little kids, have fun doing it.